Empirical research on environmental education in Europe ; [proceedings of the Meeting "State of the Art of Empirical Research on Environmental Education", Brussels, 6 - 8 January 1999]

The public education system belongs to those social institutions which contribute to fostering competences essential for ensuring Sustainable Development. But which basic competences are required for this purpose and to which extent are the education systems adapted to foster such competences? Aiming at answering these questions, empirical research projects have been carried our in many European countries. The researchers have been concerned with reasoning and acting according to sustainability as well as with the scientific knowledge required for that. The book presents recent empirical studies in the field of environmental education conducted in various European countries and Israel. The research projects were concerned with the general question of the basic competences required for fostering Sustainable Development. In this connection analyses on students' prior knowledge, students' reasoning and conditions of environmentally oriented action were carried out.